Microsoft in early October finally did what it should have done years ago: It killed Windows Phone.

The smartphone operating system’s fate was sealed when Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president in Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group, sent out this tweet: “Of course we’ll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren’t the focus.”

That effectively pulled the plug on an unsuccessful, unloved operating system that was being kept on life support by Microsoft.

Around the time Belfiore announced its demise, the operating system had a vanishingly small market share: 1.3 per cent in the U.S., and lower than that in most other places around the world, including one per cent in Great Britain and Mexico, 1.2 per cent in Germany and zero per cent in China.

It was an anticlimactic ending to an operating system that had been around in one form or another since the mid-1990s, when its predecessor for mobile devices, Windows CE, was announced. Microsoft pumped countless billions of dollars into its mobile efforts, and it utterly failed.

It may be, though, that the demise of Windows Phone indicates that good things are ahead for Microsoft — that is, if its death means that the company has finally and truly shed the arrogance that hounded it for decades.

A look at some of Windows Phone’s history shows just how far that arrogance extended. Most people may not remember, but Microsoft released a smartphone operating system five years before Apple did.

Apple, thinking differently, built an OS specifically suited to smartphones. When the iPhone was released, Windows Mobile’s market share plummeted, and Microsoft never recovered its once solid mobile standing.

And it did try, spending billions along the way. It ramped up development work to move from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone. It spent US$400 million on marketing alone to launch Windows Phone in 2012, and that’s apart from the US$150 million spent in marketing by its partner AT&T.

Business Insider estimates that US$1,666 was spent in marketing and advertising for each Windows Phone sold — quite a bit higher than the retail price of US$100, later slashed to US$50.

Faced with such sizable losses, other companies might have rethought their ability to succeed in the market, or at least shifted course.

They may make a lot of money,” he conceded, but Apple would do it with two per cent or three per cent of the smartphone market, and “I'd prefer to have our software in 60 per cent or 70 per cent or 80 per cent.”

Now, of course, that two per cent or three per cent would probably look pretty good to Microsoft. (The interview is a time capsule of misplaced optimism, with Ballmer dissing Google Docs and hinting at great things to come for the Zune music player.)

Under Ballmer, arrogance led Microsoft to double down on mobile when a change in direction was sorely needed. All those expenditures I already noted pale in comparison to the US$7.2 billion it spent to buy Nokia’s devices and services division in 2013.

Market share for Windows Phone remained minuscule, however, and before long the Nokia investment evaporated in a US$7.8 billion writedown.

From that point, most industry observers felt it was just a matter of time before a similar fate befell Windows Phone. The fact that it took two more years suggests that residual arrogance isn’t easily rooted out.

Microsoft got nothing for the billions it spent on its smartphone efforts — except possibly a tempering of its culture. CEO Satya Nadella has none of the arrogance of his predecessors, Ballmer and Bill Gates. He recognizes that there’s more to success than just exploiting the Windows brand name.

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